KOREA: Careful Response to an Accident

It was exactly the kind of incident that could have triggered military alerts—or worse—on the volatile frontier between the two Koreas. With a burst of gunfire, North Korean forces downed a U.S. helicopter that had strayed across the demarcation line; within minutes three of the American crewmen lay dead and the one survivor of the flight was taken prisoner. To ward off yet another Korean crisis, the White House moved quickly to defuse the situation created by the accidental incursion and North Korea's brutal response.

Two and a half days later, the incident had been resolved. After an intense, nine-hour negotiating session with American officials at Panmunjom, North Korea agreed to release Chief Warrant Officer Glenn Schwanke, 28, the sole survivor of the crash, and return the bodies of the three crewmen. Though the incident was caused by the "misconduct of your side," North Korea's Major General Han Chu-Kyong told U.S. Rear Admiral Warren C. Hamm Jr., "we are going to settle leniently."

Then, before a gathering of North Korean and American military officers, neutral observers and reporters, three white pine coffins were delivered to U.S. officials, who identified the bodies, resealed the coffins and carried them to the military demarcation line, where U.S. troops draped the American flag over each and bore it away. While the receipts were being signed, a Russian-made sedan drew up and Schwanke, looking pale and worn but otherwise in good shape, stepped out. Later the official North Korean news agency, monitored in Tokyo, said Schwanke had made a public apology at the city of Kae-song, five miles north of Panmunjom, shortly before his release.

The incident began when the crew of the twin-engine CH-47 Chinook apparently lost its way on a routine flight from Camp Humphreys, 40 miles south of Seoul, to a supply depot near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). As Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell later explained, the helicopter's crew seemed to have made "a navigational mistake [and] veered north at the eastern end of the DMZ."

As the helicopter buzzed over the DMZ, a unit of South Koreans, realizing it was off course, fired their rifles into the air to warn it. The shots may have confused or frightened the Chinook's pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Joseph Miles, 26, who continued to proceed across the well-marked 2.5-mile-wide DMZ into North Korea. There he landed and inspected the aircraft for damage. President Carter later related that Miles then "got back into the helicopter and took off. The North Koreans, who were approaching, apparently shot the helicopter down." Miles, Sergeant Robert Haynes, 29, and Sergeant Ronald Wells, 22, were killed either in the crash or by North Korean gunfire after the chopper hit the ground. Schwanke survived and was taken into custody.

The Chinook was the sixth U.S. airship downed by the North since the Korean War's uneasy truce was signed 24 years ago. In that time, 54 Americans have been killed in a variety of clashes with the North Koreans; last year, Captain Arthur G. Bonifas and Lieut. Mark T. Barrett were bludgeoned to death with pikes and axes when they began pruning a tree in the DMZ. North and South Koreans killed in similar incidents number more than 1,000.